You say toh-may-toe, I say toh-mah-toe!
While there is no truly defined industry standard in laying out the channel assignments for live sound, there are general layouts that a lot of live audio veteran engineers utilize with minor modifications. Typically when you layout channels you start from Drums then Keyboard, then Acoustic Guitar, then Electric Guitar, then any other instrument not covered, then vocals. Throw recorded stuff like CD/DVD players, iPods and computers at the end. Within that general set here’s a more specific layout that I use. If you have a mic or more than the number of instruments coming in you’d add them into the corresponding sequence and shift the remainder of the channels down. For example: With 2 kick drums you’d use channel 1 and 2. Mic’ing a snare with a top and bottom mic would mean putting the snare in channel 3 and 4, etc. The following layouts are ones that I’ve standardized on and I find works well for me.
32-Channel Mixer Layout
1 – Kick Drum
2 – Snare
3 – Hi-Hat
4 – Hi-Tom
5 -Mid-Tom
6 – Lo-Tom
7 – Stage Right Overhead ( *Stage Right means looking at the rleft side of the stage from the audience/sound booth perspective)
8 – Stage Left Overhead
9 – Percussion 1
10 – Percussion 2
11 – Keyboard L
12 – Keyboard R
13 – Synthesizer L
14- Synthesizer R
15 – Acoustic Guitar
16 – Electric Guitar 1
17 – Electric Guitar 2
18 – Vocal 1
19 – Vocal 2
20 – Vocal 3
21 – Vocal 4
22 – Vocal 5
23 – Choir Stage Right
24 – Choir Stage Left
25 – Pastor mic
26 – Handheld 1
27 – Handheld 2
28 – iPod L
29 – iPod R
30 – Computer L
31 – Computer R
Group Assignments
1 – Kick/Bass
2- Rest of Drums/Percussion
3 -Keys/Synths
4- Rest of Instruments
5- Vocals except for pastor and handhelds
For a 24-Channel Mixer Layout I to reduce things from L and R configurations down to mono to cut down the channels:
1 – Kick Drum
2 – Snare
3 – Hi-Hat
4 – Hi-Tom
5 -Mid-Tom
6 – Lo-Tom
7 – Stage Right Overhead ( *Stage Right means looking at the rleft side of the stage from the audience/sound booth perspective)
8 – Stage Left Overhead
9 – Percussion
10 – Keyboard
11 – Synthesizer
12 – Acoustic Guitar
13 – Electric Guitar 1
14 – Electric Guitar 2
15 – Vocal 1
16 – Vocal 2
17 – Vocal 3
18 – Vocal 4 or Choir Stage Right
19 – Vocal 5 or Choir Stage Left
20 – Pastor mic
21 – Handheld
22 – iPod
23 – Computer
Groups
1 – Kick/Bass
2 – Rest of Drums/Percussion
3 – Instruments
4 – Vocals
For a 16-Channel Mixer Layout I to reduce things even more to cut down the channels:
1 – Kick Drum
2 – Snare
3 – Hi-Hat
4 – Overhead
5 – Percussion
6 – Keyboard/Synthesizer
7 – Acoustic Guitar or Electric Guitar 1
8 – Electric Guitar 2
9 – Vocal 1
10 – Vocal 2
11 – Vocal 3
12 – Vocal 4 or Choir Stage Right
13 – Vocal 5 or Choir Stage Left
14 – Pastor mic
15 – Handheld
16 – Computer
Groups
1 – Kick/Bass
2 – Rest of Drums/Percussion
3 – Instruments
4 – Vocals
Depending on the size and liveliness of the room I don’t have a problem with going down to 2 mics on the drums. A kick mic and a good quality overhead condenser mic placed in the right position will pick up the majority of the drum kit. Now if you’ve got a drum cage for your drums you’ll get better sound by mic’ing all the drums individually but it does eat up channels.
I’ve used this setup for years after seeing it on some of the touring productions. I’m not suggesting that this is the perfect layout as there are variations and if your board layout is different and works for you stay with it. Don’t change just for the sake of change.
Now for digital boards that operate in layers you may want to arrange things depending on the number of active fader channels that are in use at any one time. So if your mixer layers faders by 8 make sure that you keep like items together without spanning layers if possible. On a digital mixer you definitely want to use the groups/DCAs/VCAs as your major controls with the individual channel faders as your fine tuners. This way you’re not driving yourself nuts hitting the active layer button just to get to a specific channel during the performance.
I hope this helps. Don’t really know the origins of this setup or why it became popular. To me it feels like a logical and natural layout. As usual, your mileage may vary!
This is a pretty close to usual on many professional sessions I’ve been involved with.
My understanding of the origin is that it is the general setup that was used by Phil Ramone at his studio in NYC (A&R Studios-?). Read Phil’s book on his techniques and I guarantee you will learn MANY valuable bits – Just look at his list of hits and listen to a few and you’ll be a believer. The pictures are great as well. Be sure to note carefully the vocal “Booth”. It’s actually a double room with lots of glass and moveable panels between the two sections. That’s how you do it right!
WHY?
Kick on one – always so you can immediately – without looking -put your hands on the heartbeat.
Drums on faders 1-8. If you really want to use 3 mics on the toms use a premix and mix them to “stereo” (really 2 chan mix). Making them stereo spreads them across the spectrum (apparent sound stage) in an unnatural sounding way. It may be the perfect way for your track -but it is not the way most are conditioned to appraise the drum kit.
Snare on 2 the most or second most important drum in the kit. No bottoms please.
Hi Hat on 8 – top only.
Bass is always on 9.
If you have more than 8 channels on drums/percussion premix to fit into the 8 channels. this can get wonky if you need eq, effects and sends on an individual channel. Make a template chart of the possibilities you usually face. Then customize for the gig – and save them. I use Excel, Word and Visio.
Lead vocal is ALWAYS on 24. 2nd lead is 23 and 21 and 22 are BGVs. WHY? The engineer is usually very close and or hands on to the stereo mains and the lead vocal is the closest because it is by far the most important in a setup using vocalists. You want to be able to tweak on the fly without looking.
The guitars and keys are somewhere in the middle. Typically I put guitars on 17-24 and keys on 11-16. I use 10 for the doubled or processed bass. Almost always bass in the dead middle of the mix. Wide wide bass on 9 and 10 if you are a Grateful Dead fan.
I use white tape on the mixer to note where everything is, engineer, date, location, event. Many studios have a wall of fame where they “save” these tapes. I have seen many famous session on these tapes. They were also the recall mechanism for many years.
I often decorate the tapes to have fun and not get bored as well as groove the vibe of the session.
I usually sub-group (buss) in blocks of 4 or 8 channels and have these in a way similar to the channels.
Drums are sub or buss 1, vocal are sub or bus 8 (8 submaster buss console).
You don’t have to do it this way, but in the chaos of a live session, losing where a buss is can be breathtaking.
Also, The Left Right stage for FOH view. Left is left, Right is right. The stage mixer and musicians don’t care usually. To put the right on the left is, once again, loading the dice against yourself. Because now left is right and right is left – got that???
Also don’t put left on even channels and odd on right hand pairs (1/2, 3/4, 23/24)
Put left on odd, even on right. Otherwise, you have to pan to the opposite, assuming you are attempting to recreate the spread of the live musicians in the monitors. – which can be very important. If you flip the spread left to right and right to left you will smear stain, and generally thin, weaken and mess up the total acoustic image of the musicians and the monitor/mains.
Once again, if the party is given by the Merry Pranksters – anything goes and have as much fun as possible.
It helps to have printed mixer templates or an app if handy to pre plan your rig and keep venues, bands, or session in their groups. I do “color code” my mic cables. Colored tape with clear shrink over. This really helps in the line checks and de bug prior to the performances. Not that you may not want to put the colored tagging too close to the connectors as it will probably be a distraction visually during the performance. I use double and triple colors and keep a list of who’s who. For example -the drums are 3 strips, starting with red red. Colors to use: red, orange, yellow, green, white, light purple. The other colors get lost on dark stages.
Going along with all this is the “remote Check List” where you spec out the gear, quantities and use.
Above all – remember –
“You can’t be in two places at once, if you are nowhere at all.” (Firesign Theatre).
Captain Jack.
I used to do this channel assignment on my Soundcraft LX7II-24.
Ch.
1-Kick
2-Snare
3-Tom 1
4-Tom 2
5-Floor Tom
6-Hi Hat
7-Overhead L
8-Overhead R
9-Bass Guitar
10-Electric Guitar 1/Acoustic Guitar
11-Electric Guitar 2
12-Sax
13-Trumpet
14-Trombone
15-Keyboard L
16-Keyboard R
17-Lead Vox 1
18-Backing Vox 1/Lead Vox 2
19-Backing Vox 2
20-Backing Vox 3
24-Talkback
Stereo Channel 1-CDJ900s & DJM900nexus
Stereo Channel 2-Pioneer MEP-7000